Shipwreck, Two Mile Hollow Beach

In Sag Harbor, you may have noticed the weathered wooden ship stern which decorated the grounds in front of the Bay Street Theater for a number of years. Before ending up there, it spent most of the last century submerged near Two Mile Hollow Beach between East Hampton and Amagansett where it was said to be visible during times of exceptionally low tides. When it washed ashore on a cold afternoon fifteen years ago, I drove to the beach and joined a crowd of hushed-voiced locals who had already converged on the scene. We huddled around the boat in the last hour of daylight.  It seems that whenever the ocean coughs up a ship or a whale they  arrive with equal measures of sadness and curiosity. Except for the words on the transom indicating a home port of New Bedford, no one could say much about the vessel. As the sun went down I took some photographs. The remains of the boat sat on the beach glowing – a gilted wooden crescent.  I returned the next afternoon hoping to see it again but it was already gone.